Modern computing devices, particularly those based on x86 or ARM architecture, have a boot process that occurs from when the power button is pressed to turn on the device until the device shows a conventional operating system or other runtime environment. Turning the power on may activate the processor. The processor may read an instruction set from ROM on the device. The instruction set may contain code or instructions for a boot loader to be activated and/or its instructions loaded into RAM. A boot loader, which may refer to a program designed to execute or operate before the operating system. It may be responsible for placing code or instructions for the operating system into RAM. The instructions for the boot loader may be a component of firmware that is provided by the original equipment manufacturer (“OEM”) that made the computing device or it may be a component of a boot image. The OEM provided firmware cannot be altered (e.g., written to or deleted) by a subsequent user and is typically stored in ROM. The boot loader may be specific to the hardware of the computing device. The boot loader may be responsible for initializing the kernel, services, and core libraries from the boot image that are required by the operating system or runtime environment. Initialization or activation of the kernel, root processes, services, core libraries, etc. as performed by the boot loader may occur in phases that are part of the boot process. That is, the kernel may be initialized in a first phase and root processes may be initialized in a subsequent phase of the boot process.